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Operating under the premise that no two workers are alike, companies that are
practicing one-to-one management are figuring out what makes each of their
employees tick. And that, the employees say, makes all the difference.
Collecting information about individuals and transforming it into tailored
offerings is the stuff of one-to-one marketing. Now companies are taking that
concept and focusing it on their own employees.
Linda Connor is a high-school-yearbook editor at heart. The vice-president of
corporate culture at Technology Professionals Corp. (TPC), a $6.6-million
technology staffing and services company in Grand Rapids, Mich., is constantly
amassing and recording lively tidbits about the organization's almost 90
employees. She then takes that information, runs it through her imagination,
and pulls out ingenious -- occasionally audacious -- ideas for customized
rewards.
"I sit down at employees' 30-day reviews and ask specific questions about
hobbies and interests for each member of their families," says Connor, who has,
among other things, arranged for a staffer to fly on an F17 bomber. "I ask
about the spouse, children, and even pets, so that if an event occurs that I
know has been a drain on the family, I can do something special just for the
spouse or kids." Connor updates her profiles over time with information and
insights gleaned from routine interaction, "so we are prepared to do things
that are very timely for their current interests or needs," she explains.
"Every time I meet an employee or I hear about a meeting someone else has had,
I take mental notes."
Collecting information about individuals and transforming it into tailored
offerings is the stuff of one-to-one marketing, a seed planted in 1993 by Don
Peppers and Martha Rogers that has since grown into the mighty oak of
customer-relationship management (CRM). But in a new twist, TPC and companies
like it are taking that concept and focusing it on their own employees. If
describing such practices as "one-to-one management" constitutes buzz-phrase
hijacking, at least the term's coiners consider the application compatible.
"Organizations are limited in their one-to-one efforts to the degree that they
don't model them internally," says Rogers, cofounder of the Peppers and Rogers
Group, in Norwalk, Conn., and coauthor of The One to One Future. "Employees are
hard-pressed to treat customers uniquely when they don't feel that's how
they're treated by the company."
"Every time I meet an employee or I hear about a meeting someone else has had,
I take mental notes."
In its 2001 survey, the Society for Human Resource Management includes a
seemingly exhaustive list of 160 benefits ranging from prepaid funerals to
ice-cream socials. One-to-one-management companies, in responding to
individuals' acknowledged desires rather than to the masses' perceived demands,
routinely devise perks of which the survey builders never even dreamed.
Creative examples encountered at several small companies include
hours as flexible as a Romanian gymnast,
funding for staff engineers and scientists to deliver their non-work-related
research at far-flung professional conferences,
the services of an ergonomics consultant,
textbook money for interns,
the opportunity for employees to audition new chairs and desks in their offices
in order to select the most comfortable.
Employee-tailored services can be as inexpensive as changing cleaning products
to ease the airways of an asthmatic, or special-ordering vegan and kosher meals
at company functions. They can also be cost-effective, delivering the same
bull's-eye impact as target marketing. "Target marketing aims to provide the
appropriate products and services to people with specific needs," explains one
software company's CEO, who didn't want his organization's accommodating nature
publicized. "Similarly, if you target the right benefits to the individual, you
eliminate a lot of waste and inefficiency associated with providing blanket
benefits to people who didn't want or need them."
Even in a fitful economy companies should consider moving beyond
cafeteria-style benefits to something approaching valet-style benefits,
suggests John Izzo, coauthor of Values Shift: The New Work Ethic and What It
Means for Business. "The available pool of really good people is eventually
going to turn into a puddle," he says. "And when it does, we're going to have
to start treating employees the way we treat customers. The grapevine about
which companies are good to work for is much stronger than it used to be."
One-to-one-management companies are run -- in a timely inversion of John
Adams's ideal -- as organizations of men (and women), not of laws. Nonetheless,
a few laws, or at least cultural traits, appear to govern many such
organizations. Together those traits create an environment where employees'
needs are known, sometimes anticipated, and served, just as customers' needs
are known, sometimes anticipated, and served in CRM-focused organizations. What
follows is a look at the rules by which one-to-one-management companies
operate.
WANT A BETTER POD? GET TO KNOW THE PEAS
One-to-one marketing relies on the accretion of data on thousands -- sometimes
millions -- of people by powerful computers. Patrick J. McGovern's brain does
sort of the same thing. Each December the founder and chairman of International
Data Group (IDG), a $3.1-billion technology-media and research company based in
Framingham, personally delivers hand-signed cards to 3,300 employees across the
United States, along with glowing words about their individual achievements
during the previous 12 months. McGovern began the practice in IDG's birth year,
1964. "I found the experience an excellent way to express one-to-one my
recognition of employees' role in our business progress and ask their personal
opinions on what we could do to improve," he says.
Back then, of course, McGovern's holiday cheer had to stretch only as far as 16
employees. Recalling the names of more than 3,000 people and what they've been
up to requires serious homework. The night before McGovern visits a business
unit, he reads and memorizes managers' reports about their employees'
accomplishments. "It takes me about three and a half weeks to deliver the cards
and the personal plaudits," says McGovern. "But I learn so much about people's
attitudes, ideas, and suggestions that it's very valuable to me.
"I'm lucky enough to have a pretty good memory," he adds.
TPC's Connor doesn't need a good memory -- she simply consults her extensive
notes about employees' peeves and preferences. Connor's entry about consultant
Phil Mayrose, for example, reveals that he loves college football, oldies
music, and -- above all else -- golf. "Loves to try different courses. Send him
out with either his wife, teammates, or a friend and he's in heaven," reads
Connor's Mayrose entry. Last year she used that information to reward the
hardworking Mayrose with a weekend getaway at a dude ranch that included
several rounds of golf.
Connor doesn't focus exclusively on rewards. She also wants to understand
employees' personal lives so that she can help when things spin out of balance.
Her comments about one employee read more like a page torn from a therapist's
notebook than something from a human-resources file: "During stressful periods
[she] loses confidence in her ability as a mom, housekeeper, sister, daughter,
friend, and aunt," Connor observes. "Ideas during high-stress times:
lawn-mowing service, housekeeping, hot meals, day away with her son."
"My experience in managing people is, they're all different."
Connor's dedicated chronicling of employees' passions manifests the philosophy
of TPC's founder and CEO, Steven Lassig, whose own ballooning workload makes it
impossible for him to keep up with every member of his fast-growing staff. Back
when TPC was just starting up, hiring someone was a little like making a new
friend, says Lassig. "I used to take not only the people we were hiring but
also their spouse or significant other to dinner," says the CEO. "We'd talk
about families, hobbies, kids."
Lassig no longer has the time even to meet every new hire, so he schedules
informal lunches several times a month with groups of no more than six
employees, just to chat. "Eventually, everyone attends," says Lassig. "It helps
me get to know them and gives me ideas on how to reward them when they do
something well."
OH, GO AHEAD. ASK
People are complex assemblages of buttons just waiting to be pushed. From that
premise rises the performance-recognition philosophy of Marc Albin, CEO of
$12-million high-tech-staffing consulting company Albin Engineering Services
Inc., in Sunnyvale, Calif. Albin believes that different employees don't just
want different rewards; they also want to be rewarded for different things,
depending on what personal qualities and talents they are most proud of. To
identify which parts of individual employees' egos need scratching, Albin takes
an unconventional approach: he asks them.
"My experience in managing people is, they're all different," says Albin. "Some
people want to be recognized for their cheerful attitude and their ability to
spread their cheerful attitude. Some want to be recognized for the quality of
their work, some for the quantity of their work. Some like to be recognized
individually; others want to be recognized in groups." Consequently, at the end
of each employee-orientation session Albin E-mails his new hires and asks them
how and in what form they prefer their strokes. "It helps me understand what
they think of themselves and their abilities, and I make a mental note to pay
special attention to them when they're working in that particular arena," he
says. "No one has ever said, 'Just recognize me for anything I do well."
"You can tell people your door is open all you want, and they'll still think,
'No, he's the CEO. He's too busy."
At TPC employees are consulted about more substantive things -- including their
own compensation. The employee-owned staffing company -- whose products are, in
essence, its people -- opens its books to its staff, sharing financial
information down to the CEO's salary. Individuals know both their target and
actual margins for each assignment. Once a year Connor asks the company's
programmers for hire to research the market value for their skill sets and
experience, and then to use that information, together with knowledge of their
own margins, to propose annual raises. (Connor uses the same method when
determining compensation for sales, recruitment, and office-support staff,
although information on margins, in those cases, does not apply.) She accepts
their numbers without question 95% of the time, she says, and occasionally
assents to a larger-than-warranted increase if an employee's personal
circumstances recommend it.
"It's silly for me to slide a piece of paper across the table saying, 'This is
what you're worth this year,' without any input from them," says Connor. "If
there's a year that they have to be a little less fair to the corporation
because of something that's going on in their lives -- a sickness in the
family, for example -- I don't have any issue with that because I know these
people are committed to the TPC family. And if they take a little more this
year, next year when the new bill rate [for their services] comes in, they'll
choose to take slightly less."
TPC has gone so far as to solicit input into company culture. In 1999, Lassig
staged a contest he called "Programmers' Paradise," which invited employees to
describe their ideal work environment. First prize, for the best answer, was
$5,000; second and third prizes were a couple of PCs. Many of the suggestions
Lassig received migrated into company policy: for example, performance awards
can be monetary or -- if an employee chooses -- in the form of free
housecleaning services or airline tickets. When TPC raises the rate at which an
employee is billed out, the employee can choose additional vacation days in
lieu of a raise. To keep those ideas flowing, TPC eschews traditional
end-of-year performance reviews and instead asks employees to fill out
extensive surveys on how they feel the company is doing and how their work
lives can be improved. "We ask if the organization is serving their needs and
if not, why not," says Lassig. "Instead of us reviewing them, it's them
reviewing us."
PROBLEM SOLVED
Rick Sapio wouldn't dream of characterizing his business as an employee utopia.
"We're a very intense, fast-growth company," says Sapio, CEO of 37-employee
Mutuals.com, a New York City mutual-fund advisory firm that twists the
traditional model by charging a flat fee for most of its services. "Turnover is
high -- 36% -- although it's dropping. Most of that turnover happens in the
first month: people sign up and they don't realize what the pace is going to be
like. We do so many innovative things, there's a lot of stress -- a lot of
pressure."
In that environment Sapio can't spare much time to inquire whether an employee
has managed to snag tickets to The Producers or wants to use the CEO's parking
space while he's out of town. But Sapio concerns himself deeply with employees'
ability to labor unencumbered by flawed processes, inadequate supplies, or
pockets of ignorance and confusion. To keep his company's organizational
arteries clear, last year Sapio introduced Hassles, an E-mail box where
employees can vent their concerns. Problems are dealt with -- or at least
acknowledged -- within the same week.
"If something takes up more than two minutes of your day, and it's not part of
your ordinary job, then that's a hassle," says Sapio. Every month the E-mail
box is hammered with about 100 such missives, ranging from petty irritations to
thoughtful suggestions. The CEO reels off some recent submissions: "When we get
a lead, why can't it be automatically added to the database without my having
to retype it?" "Why do I need to fill out a form to request a vacation day?" "I
have to constantly walk to the printer, and it's too far away from my desk."
Hassles is the ward of chief financial officer Stefanie Nall, who each week
corrals two employees to tear through the list and solve as many problems as
possible. (Managers must sign off on all the decisions.) Nall then runs down
some of the faits accomplis at the company's Monday-morning staff meetings.
"The goal is 100%, but some of these are very substantial problems that
require, for example, rewriting the software for our database," says Sapio.
"Within a month we probably get 75% solved."
Hassles gripes are public gripes: they live in an unprotected section of the
company's intranet, and their resolution is brandished before the entire staff.
Some employees, however, prefer that their grievances be kept on the q.t. For
them, Sapio espouses an open-door policy, but not with the sort of vague "drop
by anytime" invitation guaranteed to keep anyone lowlier than a vice-president
at bay. Instead, every Friday morning the CEO sends out a companywide E-mail
announcing his presence in the back conference room from 11 a.m. to noon.
(Sometimes the company's president sits in instead.) For that hour Sapio does
nothing but listen to employees' concerns. "You can tell people your door is
open all you want, and they'll still think, 'No, he's the CEO. He's too busy,"
says Sapio. "But if you're sitting with nothing in front of you in a room with
no more than a table, the message is 'I'm not busy. I am waiting here to talk
to you.' And people come."
GET OUTTA HERE
All work (even work made palatable by customized benefits, processes, and
environments) and no play (of the
I-am-having-so-much-fun-I-can't-remember-what-I-do-for-a-living variety) burns
out even the most dedicated employees. Summer picnics and Halloween parties are
fine, but gossiping with colleagues over plastic plates groaning with olive
loaf and coleslaw is few people's sweet dream of relaxation. Practitioners of
one-to-one management give employees not only what they want at work but also
the means and incentive to enjoy life outside the office.
"We want people to be passion ate about life and hobbies and outside pursuits,
because we want passionate people."
Three years ago Metzger Associates Inc., a $4.1-million technology
public-relations company in Boulder, Colo., was having trouble recruiting and
keeping senior staff. CEO and founder John Metzger examined the bait being
dangled by the rest of his industry and decided to try something different. "We
looked at the benefits other PR agencies were putting forth, and we found they
typically involved keeping people in the office as long as possible so they
would be billable," says Metzger. "A concierge service. 'We'll buy you pizza
after 7 p.m.' 'Bring your dog to work.'
"Our benefits are all based on getting people out of the office," says Metzger.
"We want them to refresh and rejuvenate."
Like any good one-to-one manager, Metzger left the design of the company's
"Live Long and Prosper" benefit to his 30-plus employees. They devised a
package of activities in four categories for which all staff members are
reimbursed: $600 for physical fitness (gym memberships, a stationary bicycle),
$500 for outdoor living (ski passes, sailing classes), $600 for relaxation
(guitar instruction, vacations), and $1,000 for education (classes at community
colleges and universities). In the program's first 18 months, employees used
their funds for everything from bikini waxes and personal-trainer fees to
fly-fishing lessons and a bachelorette party in Las Vegas. Turnover, meanwhile,
went from around 15% down to 2% last year.
"We've never denied anything that I'm aware of," says Metzger. "We're open to
individuals' telling us whatever they need to be balanced in their lives. We
want people to be passionate about life and hobbies and outside pursuits,
because we want passionate people."
Leigh Buchanan is a senior editor at Inc.
Leigh Buchanan is an editor at large for Inc. Magazine. A former editor at
Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes
regular columns on leadership and workplace culture, and she contributes Inc.'s
capsule book reviews, "A Skimmer's Guide to the Latest Business Books."
@LeighEBuchanan